Estuarine Coastal Management Program

• Focus: Moruya River, Mummuga Lake, and Wagonga Inlet
• Status: Adopted at the ordinary Council Meeting on Tuesday 25 October 2022
• Next step: Certification by the NSW Minister for Local Government

A Coastal Management Program (CMP) is a strategic plan for the management of all or part of the coastal zone within Eurobodalla Shire. The CMP is prepared in accordance with the Coastal Management Act 2016 (CM Act), Coastal Management State Environmental Planning Policy 2018 (CMSEPP) and the Coastal Management Manual (the Manual).

Council and coastal management specialists Salients prepared the Coastal Estuary Management Plan for Moruya River, Mummuga Lake and Wagonga Inlet. This is a standalone plan for the management of our estuaries. There is a separate program for the management of Eurobodalla's open coast (the Open Coast Coastal Management Program).

Under the NSW Coastal Management Act 2016 having a certified Coastal Management Program enables councils to access NSW Government funding to protect, manage and maintain our coastal estuaries. We prepared this program in five stages:

• Stage one (complete): Prepare a scoping study to identify key issues and the range of technical assessments required.
• Stage two (complete): Technical investigation to identify areas that are potentially at risk from coastal hazards now and into the future. These will be investigated following the certification of this CMP as an action.
• Stage three (complete): Develop strategies to protect our estuaries and maintain the values held by our community that are associated with estuaries. Council held drop-in sessions and undertook an online survey to seek community ideas and feedback to determine what solutions best align with these values. Water quality, access for recreation and sporting activities, maintenance of natural beauty have been recognised as key community values.
• Stage four (underway): Public exhibition and certification of the program. The community had an opportunity to comment and contribute during this stage. The next step is to forward the adopted program to the NSW Minister for Local Government for certification.
• Stage five: Implement and monitor the program.

View the program:

• Eurobodalla Estuarine Coastal Management Program - Part 1 (10.5 MB)
• Eurobodalla Estuarine Coastal Management Program - Part 2 (10.4 MB)

Community engagement

Preparing a Coastal Management Program requires thorough community engagement to help guide the management plan. While preparing the CMP, we aimed to use community and stakeholder feedback to shape the management actions.

Due to COVID-19, our community engagement was different to typical face-to-face approaches. For COVID-safety, Council engaged with the community engagement entirely online. We let people know about opportunities to get involved by issuing a media release and posting about it on Council's facebook page. The post featured a 50 second video of estuary footage and a link to our webpage and survey.

August - September 2020

• We invited community members to give feedback via a short survey, which helped us to identify the community values around estuary management.
• This survey asked about what people would like to see in terms of management solutions or areas for management that might lie outside the scope of the existing management plans.
• The survey also included a section to ask questions, which we have answered on our frequently asked questions page.
• Find out more about the survey results.
• We used the survey responses to guide our management program for the estuaries.

November 2021 - January 2022

• The draft Estuaries CMP was on public exhibition for further community feedback from 5 November 2021 to 5 January 2022.
• We received 22 submissions and revised the draft to incorporate community feedback.

October 2022

• The CMP was adopted at the ordinary Council Meeting on Tuesday 25 October 2022.

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